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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Creative talent can be a tricky thing. An artist may have control over their work if they keep it private, but the minute they commercialize their talents for a paying customer, well, things can get a bit ugly. That’s how you get stories of artists reclaiming paintings they’ve sold because they don’t like the people looking at them, or writers walking off movie sets infuriated at the direction their screenplay has gone. What’s common in artistic circles or in Hollywood, though, doesn’t come up much in the automotive industry. Not much, but it happens.

Take, for example, one Webb Bland, the photographer behind the recently leaked photos of the new 2012 Chrysler 200 Convertible. A beautiful set of shots, to be sure, but Bland has gone on an absolute tirade on his Facebook page, enraged that the photos were leaked ahead of schedule. In his fury, Bland lashed out at his client Chrysler and the “lone, misguided idiot” who leaked the photos, thus ruining “five weeks of careful planning and logistics”.

Bland’s wrath, however, is not reserved for his clients alone; he goes on to lambaste the “many car blogs [that] have already run many of the photos cropped awkwardly, without context or back story, and at a horribly compressed resolution, on top of that.” Hey, that’s us! You’ll have to read the full diatribe (which we’ve posted for you after the jump in case the shooter gets second thoughts) to get all the expletives we’ve left out, but while – for our part at least – we’re not about to engage Bland in his ranting, we can’t help but wonder if he’s ever heard the old adage, “Don’t pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”